There is no more obvious indicator of spiritual decay or deadness than disdain for the joyful worship of others. None.
I’ve seen it in church after church, and heard it from scores of worship leaders in multiple denominations. Every one of them has dealt with someone or a group of someones who bristle at the enthusiastic expression of others in worship.
I first noticed it as a teenager, when the excitement of the Jesus Movement finally made its way from California into sleepy southern churches in the south where I lived. Young people were filling up “youth choirs”, and dragging their drum sets onto the church platforms. However, this was usually only for a Sunday evening designated as a “Youth Service”. That was fare warning for all the crabby people to stay home, because things were about to get lit.
Eventually, we started wondering why that joy and energy couldn’t be a part of the regular Sunday morning experience. Over time, the drums stayed on the platform, sometimes tucked in a corner next to the organ. It was an odd juxtaposition, but it said something important: that worship is not just about tradition, but about ALL God’s people expressing their love for God.
But that juxtaposition often resulted in minor skirmishes or even out right battles in some congregations. The people who liked things the way they had been were unwilling to include the music of their young, excitable brothers and sisters in Christ. They began criticizing their pop-influenced soft rock worship songs as “lacking strong theology”, assuming the standard for good worship songs is how many doctrines you cite in the lyrics.
The new worship choruses were often admittedly light on doctrine for a simple reason – most of those songs were not talking ABOUT God as much as they were singing TO God. That’s yet another thing the crabby folks didn’t care for. Many of the new songs spoke boldly to God with spiritual passion, springing from the spiritual revival that was sweeping the country.
And one thing a true revival does is make the un-revived very uncomfortable.
When you’ve been comfortable in the darkness, there is nothing more jarring than walking outside into bright, blazing sunlight. Just exit your movie theater after two dimly-lit hours and see how you react. So when people who’ve grown comfortable in spiritual darkness are confronted with people on fire for God, their response is to assume someone else did something inappropriate.
The worst part is when you are a mature, grown adult who’s been sitting in a Bible class for 40 years, and you suddenly realize some teenager has personally experienced more of the power of God in their life than you ever have! That’s too bitter a pill for many to swallow!
But you can never admit your problem is really just your own spiritual anemia. So you attack the ones who make your lack of passion look bad by comparison. You say the other’s worship lacks “reverence”, accusing those kids who boldly jump up in the Father’s lap as having a lack of respect for God. Your worship has “dignity”, you say.
You keep your distance from a holy God out of “respect”, you say.
But what you’ve really done is indict yourself. Children who truly love their father don’t respond to him in fear unless they’ve done something wrong. Children in a loving relationship with a parent will run and jump in their arms. That doesn’t mean they don’t respect them. It simply means their love overwhelms their fear of rejection, and they are confident in their father’s love.
When you respond to God with distance, you are telegraphing to the world you are in spiritual decline or spiritual disobedience. Things are not right with you and your Father, so like Adam, you hide from God in the garden.
When I’ve counseled worship leaders who are under attack by “the crabby people” I’ve experienced now since those early days in the 1970s, I simply remind them of King David in 2 Samuel 6:22. David has been celebrating the entrance of the Ark of the Covenant back into Jerusalem after being captured and held for years by the Philistines. The Ark’s return meant the manifest presence of God would be back in town, so David’s worship expression went to an extreme level.
As the Ark entered Jerusalem, David began dancing “with all his might”. So not just a restrained “gavotte”, but a full on hoedown. He threw off his kingly vestments and worshipped in a linen ephod typical of a mere priest. When his bitter, hateful wife Michal saw him, she was filled with anger toward him.
So what did she do? She said the same things about David that they will say about your worship when you do it to the glory of God:
She said he was undignified in worship.
– “Dignity” is the camouflage word for hearts without enough passion to praise. Dignity is the cloak a spiritually dead heart hides behind.
She said his worship was merely a performance and not authentic
– spiritually dry people could never imagine having that level of passion for God. For them to do it, it would be fake because they cannot muster that much love for God in their barrenness. So they assume you must be fake too.
She said his true motive was to attract attention to himself from others
– today, people will say you worship just to get people’s attention. That’s because they envy your passion and are embarrassed by how it exposes their dryness in comparison.
I love David for his response to his bitter wife, ”I shall be more undignified than this”! In other words, “You think that was bad? You ain’t seen nothing yet!”
That’s why I don’t listen to people who want to argue about worship. When you get mad about how someone else worships, you reveal way too much about your own heart. Honestly, I’m embarrassed for them.
No one who loves God should ever discourage someone else’s expression of worship, unless that worship somehow violates the teachings of Scripture. But nothing goes against scriptural teaching on worship like dull, unengaged, dispassionate praise offered from a dry heart.
One other thing that scripture points out in this passage is a bit startling. The Bible points out that after this, Michal never bore children. I honestly don’t know if this is because the Lord wouldn’t bless her, or if her attitude toward David indicated there was no more intimacy left in their relationship. Either way, what an indictment!
The fact it is included in this account about worship is a warning: resentment toward worship results in spiritual barrenness. It is one of the most dangerous diagnostics of a believer’s spiritual life. It indicates one of two things about that person: either they are in a dangerous season of spiritual dryness, or they are in fact spiritually dead and not really a child of God.
So when people criticize your worship, you need to dismiss their criticism like David did. But you also need to pray for them, and seriously while they still have time.
They need to change, and fast. What a terrifying way to enter eternity one day, resentful of the love others have for the very God you are about to face…
